Sanctions are crippling the economy of ‘Fortress Russia’

March 4, 2022

A shuttered stock market, close to default, business boycotts and a rush to the cash machines: the Russia economy is on its knees just eight days into the invasion. The scale of the looming economic collapse has clearly alarmed Russia’s business elite following a tidal wave of Western sanctions with oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin breaking cover to criticise the invasion. JPMorgan warned on Friday that the country is facing a hit as great as Russia’s 1998 financial crisis, predicting an 11pc peak-to-trough GDP plunge. The Centre for Economics and Business Research expects a 14pc hit in lost output in Russia over two years.
Oil and gas is still flowing from Russia to Europe, keeping a vital revenue source for its economy and the Kremlin intact.  But shoppers and industries, including banking, shipping, aviation and retail, are already feeling the heat as the West severs economic ties and turn Russia into a pariah state.

In just over a week Russia has suffered an economic meltdown. And worse is too come. The Economist said this week that the sanctions introduced by the US / UK / EU on the 26th February are causing “financial mayhem” in Russia causing Putin to increase Russia’s nuclear alert level. With incredible foresight, Brother John Thomas wrote these words in 1848,

“Let the Russian treasury be as empty as it is said to be, and its expenditure exceed its revenue by double the alleged deficit, it will only operate as a pressure from within, causing her autocrat [Gog], to enter into countries, and to overflow and pass over, and to enrich himself with the spoil of those he is destined to subdue.”

Ezekiel wrote

And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords (Ezekiel 38:4)

The hook in the jaws is the lure of spoil in Israel (gas/oil) required by Gog to replace lost revenues in Europe…

Andy Walton

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Preceding

Looking at a “Man from the North” endangering the world

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Additional reading

1. 2022 Political hotchpotch
2. Ukraine Crisis Reading List
3. Nuclear-War Risk Minimized in Rare Statement by Weapon States
4. Putin puts Russia’s nuclear force on high alert
5. US insight from the Independent for the first week of March 2022

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